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2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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The journey of the U.S. fuel cycle
Craig Piercycpiercy@ans.org
While most big journeys begin with a clear objective, they rarely start with an exact knowledge of the route. When commissioning the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1803, President Thomas Jefferson didn’t provide specific “turn right at the big mountain” directions to the Corps of Discovery. He gave goal-oriented instructions: explore the Missouri River, find its source, search for a transcontinental water route to the Pacific, and build scientific and cultural knowledge along the way.
Jefferson left it up to Lewis and Clark to turn his broad, geopolitically motivated guidance into gritty reality.
Similarly, U.S. nuclear policy has begun a journey toward closing the U.S. nuclear fuel cycle. There is a clear signal of support for recycling from the Trump administration, along with growing bipartisan excitement in Congress. Yet the precise path remains unclear.
Jae-Hyuk Eoh, Ji-Young Jeong, Seong-O Kim, Dohee Hahn, Nam-Cook Park
Nuclear Technology | Volume 152 | Number 3 | December 2005 | Pages 286-301
Technical Paper | Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT05-A3677
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A quasi-steady system analysis of the sodium-water reaction (SWR) phenomena in a liquid-metal reactor (LMR) was performed using the Sodium-water reaction Event Later Phase System Transient Analyzer (SELPSTA) computer simulation code. The code has been formulated by implementing various physical assumptions to simplify the complex SWR phenomena, and it adopts the long-term mass and energy transfer (LMET) model developed in the present study. The LMET model is based on the hypothesis that the system transient can be described by the pressure and temperature transient of the cover gas space, and it can be applied only to the reaction period characterized by bulk motion. To evaluate the feasibility of the physical model and its assumptions, a scale-down mock-up test was carried out, and it was demonstrated that the numerical simulation using the LMET model adequately replicates the overall phenomena of the experiment with reasonable understanding. Based on the findings, as a numerical example, the long-term system transient responses during the SWR event of the Korea Advanced LIquid MEtal Reactor (KALIMER) were investigated, and it was found that the long-term dynamic responses are strongly dependent on the design parameters and operational strategies. As a result, the numerical simulation method developed in the present study is practicable; furthermore, the SELPSTA code is useful to resolve the risk for the SWR event.